Life's Little Ironies

It's always a pleasant surprise when I stumble across a new link to my website. Today, I found that an academic newsletter reprinted an old piece of mine in its entirety and even included a link to its page on my website. But there's more to the story.

The short article both explains and demonstrates why spell checkers don't work and why it is so important to proofread before publishing. The problem with spell checkers is that if a piece of text uses a legitimate word in the wrong context, the spell checker won't notice. This often happens when someone happens to make a typo that results in a correctly spelled word. It could also happen if a writer doesn't know which homonym to choose. Should it be there or their, it's or its, then or than? The spell checker will accept any correctly spelled word, even if it's the wrong one.

So why am I writing about this? After all, as a publication of a reputable academic institution, the newsletter provided the appropriate acknowledgement of the source of the piece: "Complements of http://www.cmiiw.com/mistakes.htm"

Ironic, right? The author added only two words and the spell checker missed the error.

I wrote the editors to let them know that they should have written "Compliments of ..." instead of "Complements of ..." After all, why should I let such nice people look bad? They were a bit red-faced but gracious and grateful. And they corrected the spelling immediately.